Review: A DARK NIGHT IN DALSTON, Park Theatre

Stewart Permutt's two-hander is the latest piece to run in Park Theatre's Park90 performance space, running alongside Action To The Word's A Clockwork Orange in Park200. As the play begins it looks like it will be a study on religious intolerance and culture clash, but as it goes on it tries to deal with the weighty topic of mental health. This lack of focus is one of the play's biggest failings.

Gideon (Joe Coen) is a middle-class Jew from Stanmore who ends up getting attacked whilst visiting someone in Dalston. Gina (Michelle Collins) notices him sat in the street in a daze and insists upon him coming inside to get cleaned up - he eventually agrees, though it leads to him missing his chance to use public transport before Shabbat, stranding him miles from home.

Gideon keeps trying to leave but each time Gina convinces him he's not up to it, making her earlier assistance seem more opportunistic than altruistic. A few glasses of whisky later and they're more comfortable in each other's company and feeling very relaxed indeed...

It's hard to know where to start. Collins gets some early laughs in from a few one-liners (mostly about one of her neighbours being a "slapper"), but her character's tendency to punctuate every sentence with "babes" gets irritating very quickly. The whole thing doesn't feel rooted in any kind of reality, and is actually quite offensive in some ways; Gina's ignorant comments about other cultures really jar, though I imagine Permutt was aiming for humour.

The characters' attitudes towards mental illness leave a lot to be desired, for what is a sensitive subject - both are flippant and one makes a suicide attempt a propos of nothing, then immediately regrets it and throws up the pills. The other later toys with the idea of killing themselves using the same method. If it's trying to make a meaningful statement, it fails spectacularly.

Gina spends a lot of time talking to her partner Billy in the next room while the audience listens through the wall, and there are far too many lengthy pauses. There is absolutely no chemistry between Collins and Coen considering they both intermittently try to seduce the other - most of these scenes fall flat. Neither really seems to commit fully to their performances, making it a half-hearted affair all round.

Simon Daw's design is a positive, the thrust stage transforming the studio into Gina's living room and kitchen space. The best element is the wallpaper on the back wall which seems like a generic pattern at first glance, but if you look more closely it represents the tower blocks on the estate that Gina calls home. It's quite a clever way to subtly contextualise the whole piece in a visual way.

This bloated production unfortunately never gets going, and consequently you feel every single one of the 105 minutes ticking slowly by as another joke bombs. A flat night in Finsbury.

A Dark Night in Dalston is at the Park Theatre until 1 April

Picture credit: Helen Murray

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